The Secret History of Miss Jean Louis
Everyone knows about Miss Jean Louis's childhood in Djibouti, about the small seaside village where she was born at a very young age, and about her prodigious forays into the South African polka scene.
So, too, do we know about her more recent years, about her courageous attempts to keep Misha Collins from accidentally electrocuting himself or anyone else, and about her helping to organize GISHWHES. Miss Jean Louis had made a name for herself encouraging participants to go above and beyond that of which they'd previously believed themselves capable.
These are the things we know about Miss Jean Louis, but what I would like to talk about are the lost years, that time that's largely unaccounted for between her polka-filled childhood and Misha-infested adulthood.
I would like to talk about Miss Jean Louis's teenage years spent as ringmistress of the Secret Midwestern Spider Circus. Unfortunately, given the secrecy surrounding the circus (it's there in the name!) there are large gaps in our knowledge of this time in Miss Jean Louis's life that will likely never be filled. However, we've heard from reliable sources that she was approached by the traveling spider troupe one day when they heard her yelling at a corn field, encouraging it to grow. Impressed with her vocal abilities, she was considered for a position as a barker, but the barking spiders weren't particularly keen on having her as competition. Eventually she was offered the position of ringmistress despite her youth and relative inexperience. By all reports she flourished! Under the tutelage of the owner, an old tarantula named Goliath Kavaces, Miss Jean Louis quickly became an expert at exciting the crowds, no small task considering how tightly they were bound in their silk cocoons.
Miss Jean Louis remained with the Spider Circus throughout their heyday in the mid-90's. However, by 1998 attendance had begun to flag, owing to competition in the form of the Cicada Carnival and the newly formed Bumblebee Volleyball League. It was around that time rumors began to circulate of Miss Jean Louis experiencing creative differences with Goliath Kavaces, the latter of whom had begun applying pressure to his esteemed ringmistress to go under the knife, thinking a few extra arms would make her look less out of place among the spider troupe and would perhaps boost attendance.
Miss Jean Louis took her leave from the Spider Circus in the summer of 1999. The Spider Circus itself closed its doors a mere two years later, many of its former members finding employment as extras and stunt-spiders in the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Miss Jean herself continued her trek across the continental United States as if her years long detour had never happened. Gishwhes and greatness were still in her future. Rumors that she'd been hollowed out and replaced by a colony of Argentinian swarming spiders were, and continue to be, completely unfounded.
